Another new feature on my blog…. I usually display interesting posts and articles and such (at least interesting to me) in my sidebar under “What others are talking about”. In order to give them a bit more exposure I decided to list them in a weekly post called “week on the web”. Here we go…
- Judith created a very funny guest post quiz about “What kind of holiday reader are you?” over on Birgit’s blog “The Book Garden”
- Christopher Walken re-tells “The three little pigs”
- The 20 most iconic book covers ever at Flavorwire
- Amigurumi a little different, very cute nevertheless. Want to see Buffy stake Spike? Head on over to Pop Culture Crochet!
- A VERY nice Steampunk house (not the Steampunk loft in NY that is for sale for almost 2 Mio. dollars).
- Want to have a look at some seriously ugly lamps? Go to the better after blog and take a look at the “Ugly Lamp Competition”. You will see things nightmares are made of. All I say is “creepy baby”.
No problem! Just go to Lucy Knisley’s Live Journal and have a look at the Summharry. Eight illustrated posters that sum up the whole story of all Harry Potter books in a parody comic.
For a limited time Lucy even offers free downloads of the high resolution files so you can print them out and put up on your walls.
HP fans should have a look!
My kids like crafting. So I booked my older son for a few craft workshops during the holidays to keep him occupied for a few hours.
One of them was a Deco patch class and I thought he’d come home with this enormous sculpture covered by patterned paper, instead he came home with a super cute collage. I love the little lizard with the various papers on him. And can you see the horizon lines?
Some time ago a friend gave me the German book “Die kleinen Leute von Swabedoo”, a fairy tale by an unknown author. It is a wonderful story about loving, giving and what happens when you stop doing that. I looked around on the net whether there was an English version out there and it seems there are different versions of the story.
In general the story seems to be called “Warm fuzzies”, because warm fuzzies are the gifts that people exchange in the story (in German they are giving “small, warm fur”, something the reader can actually feel because one “small, warm fur” is attached to the cover of the book). There is one version on amazon called The Original Warm Fuzzy Tale
One of the reviewers on amazon complains about people dying in the “original” story. That is something she doesn’t “want to read to her children”. I wonder why. In every fairy tale (just like in real life) gruesome things happen and a lot of people die. Why wouldn’t she want to read that to her kids? I wanted to recommend to her the book The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales
All that aside, if you have kids and want to teach them something about the importance of happiness, giving and love, then this very short book is not a bad choice at all.
To all the parents out there who have tried to get a kid to sleep… Hilarious and so true. If you prefer to read the book by Adam Mansbach, you can have a look here: Go the F**k to Sleep
For the Germanophiles: You can also listen to Werner Herzog read the book at the launch at the NY Public Library.
In the US it is National Children’s Book Week. You can find out everything about the event at the Children’s Book Week site.
There you will also find various ideas for how to celebrate during the week, you will find a downloadable book mark and lots of interesting links to events and other websites.
Time to list a few of my favourite children’s books:
- Where the wild things are
Unfortunately my kids are not too keen on it. - The Lorax
Every kid show know the Lorax. - The Wizard, the Ugly, and the Book of Shame
Wonderful artwork - Tyrannosaurus Drip
The cutest story of a herbivore dino’s egg ending up in the T-Rex’ nest - The Gruffalo
Who doesn’t love the Gruffalo?
You can find a more extensive list in a previous Thursday 13 post about favourite children’s books.
What are YOUR favourite children’s books?
Like I said before already, today is Earth Day and it is appropriate to take “The Lorax ” as today’s
” as today’s
book. To read a bit more about “The Lorax” please go to my previous post titled “The Lorax Project”.
The book is, of course, written in the typical manner of Dr. Seuss. Here we go:
At the far end of town
where the Grickle-grass grows
and the wind smells slow-and-sour when it blows
and no birds ever sing excepting old crows…
is the Street of the Lifted Lorax.
I am getting a feeling that the end is near already…
Today is Earth Day. You can’t start early enough to introduce children to the protection of the environment and teach them how important it is. What better kids’ book than The Lorax by Dr. Seuss
It is the story of the Once-ler who comes to an area and cuts down all the trees in order to produce Thneeds out of them in his factory. The Lorax frequently comes and warns him about the consequences of his ruthless exploitation – to no avail. In the end the environment is destroyed, the trees gone, the animals have left and the once paradise like surroundings are grey and uninhabitable. But there is a tiny hope…
When I read the book to our 7 year old he asked me who would ever want to destroy nature in order to make some money. Little does he know…
On Seussville there even are Lorax Project files available. You can download discussion ideas for school classes, a tool kit for a class project and various activity sheets.
Happy reading and happy Earth Day!
Bonnie’s review of The Lorax at Banned Books
The Spirited Review of The Lorax
Review of The Lorax at about.com
Today is about “The Neverending Story” by Michael Ende. The original German title is “Die unendliche Geschichte” which was translated into English literally. I have read this book quite a few times when I was a kid and loved it. I still do. I thought I’d have a look at a few of its covers.
The German covers are all pretty simple. In fact, the simpler the cover of this story is, the better. That’s why I prefer the first one which is a special edition. I have the second one, it is ok. The illustration is rather plain and doesn’t suggest a lot. I don’t like the third one. The snakes, yeah, ok, there is the connection to the book, but other than that I find it rather ugly.
The English covers, well, I like the first one in itself, but I hate the fact that it tries to tell the reader what things look like. The Neverending Story is a book that should leave everything to the imagination of the individual reader. I’m not quite fair here because there are illustrations in my German edition but for some reason they never kept me from creating pictures in my mind at the time. Maybe I was more imaginative when I was younger and never paid attention to pictures in books. The film, however, is a different matter. I absolutely hated the film. The way it depicted Fuchur for example was so disappointing, I was shocked. Unfortunately after seeing that worm like thing it is how I NOW imagine Fuchur in my head whereas before he looked totally different. I have to say it again, I hate that film. And now you know what I think about that second English cover. “Now a fabulous film”, yeah, right. Don’t think so.
In the course of recent events (for more info on that see last weeks Friday Coffee chat) I decided to tell Corin about bookmarks and how important they are (to some). Since crafting of any kind is a good pastime for children anyway I suggested he create a bookmark for himself. So he cut out the shape, traced the animals (mice at the bottom, something else on top) , coloured them in with watercolour pencils and added a bit of glitter. After that we laminated it. So, now, if he only started reading his books instead of having them read I’d be the happiest mom ever.
